KLE replacement outside of the US

Will the KLE be replaced in UK as well?
In Hong Kong, BMW says, they know nothing about any KLE replacement.

I think they're pulling your leg.

Mine was replaced before delivery at my request because the car is a long way away from any current i dealers.

Recall / Replacement ID is "B61 31 14" I believe its being applied in a staggered fashion to VINs, so not all will show it immediately. Those cars manufactured after September should already have new KLE and appropriate software.

UK KLE's are being replaced when cars go into dealers and their VIN blocks have been assigned the recall ID, as the issue that prompted the design change doesn't appear to be so much of a problem in the UK, it isn't being pro-actively replaced, unless you have already had a charge fault resulting in a previous replacement of a KLE.

jackt said:

Recall / Replacement ID is "B61 31 14" I believe its being applied in a staggered fashion to VINs, so not all will show it immediately. Those cars manufactured after September should already have new KLE and appropriate software.

Click to expand...

Mine was manufactured on October 2nd and it still had the old KLE, so the cut off date must be way later than 'after September'. And yes, I had to ask for it (which I did when the car was in service anyway) - mine was charging full rate with old KLE, no problems noticed, but I had it replaced anyway.

The cutoff for the new KLE was sometime in October. Mine was built Oct 14 and has the new KLE. Others have posted early Oct build dates and got the old KLE. When the KLE's started showing up in sufficient quantity, many arriving vehicles were held up at the port and had the new one installed. There were several others that have posted that their cars arrived at the port in CA on the same boat that mine arrived on. Mine cleared the VPC in 2 days, others took 2 weeks as they were in line for getting the KLE's replaced.

jackt said:

Recall / Replacement ID is "B61 31 14" I believe its being applied in a staggered fashion to VINs, so not all will show it immediately. Those cars manufactured after September should already have new KLE and appropriate software.

UK KLE's are being replaced when cars go into dealers and their VIN blocks have been assigned the recall ID, as the issue that prompted the design change doesn't appear to be so much of a problem in the UK, it isn't being pro-actively replaced, unless you have already had a charge fault resulting in a previous replacement of a KLE.

Click to expand...

I agree that the design fault may not be causing so many problems in the UK but it is an inconvenience whenever any of us needs to get a charge quickly or unexpectedly with a 7kWh charge that can't deliver full rate. Contrary to what has often been said I've seen no evidence that the charge rate restriction is temperature limited and have never seen more than about 5.7kWh at home regardless of weather.

RJSATLBA said:

Contrary to what has often been said I've seen no evidence that the charge rate restriction is temperature limited and have never seen more than about 5.7kWh at home regardless of weather.

Click to expand...

What is your supply voltage to the EVSE? Power=amps*volts. The car only draws a certain number of amps based on what the EVSE says it has (not watts). The signal coming out of the EVSE is (supposed to be) calibrated to the number of maximum amperes it can provide. The resulting watts delivered therefore can vary not only by what that says is available, but also by the voltage applied and the car's desires and needs after reading that signal (hopefully, correctly!).

Say 30A*220vac = 6600W; 30A*208vac=6240; 30A*240vac=7200W The difference between 208 (a common commercial power in the USA) and 240 is nearly one Kw.

Now, say the signal coming from your EVSE is slightly off, it could be saying it has less amperage available, or, the car's reading of that signal may be a little off. My i3, before the new KLE, and with the software limitation applied, was regularly drawing over 7Kw. I had not installed the meter before it got cold, so I do not know if it changed. I also don't regularly drive my vehicle more than about 10 miles, so neither the battery nor the whole vehicle get particularly hot, and much of that driving is on city streets at lower speeds, which may point to heat as the triggering factor.

As an experiment, instead of plugging the vehicle in immediately when you get home, wait well into the evening so it has cooled off from your trip and then see if it makes any difference. It may, or it may not. Either way, it's an interesting experiment.

jadnashuanh said:

Now, say the signal coming from your EVSE is slightly off, it could be saying it has less amperage available, or, the car's reading of that signal may be a little off. My i3, before the new KLE, and with the software limitation applied, was regularly drawing over 7Kw. I had not installed the meter before it got cold, so I do not know if it changed. I also don't regularly drive my vehicle more than about 10 miles, so neither the battery nor the whole vehicle get particularly hot, and much of that driving is on city streets at lower speeds, which may point to heat as the triggering factor.

As an experiment, instead of plugging the vehicle in immediately when you get home, wait well into the evening so it has cooled off from your trip and then see if it makes any difference. It may, or it may not. Either way, it's an interesting experiment.

Click to expand...

From my experience with i3 I see it draws current in steps. For example no matter what you set your pilot to tell the car int he 15-20A range it will draw 15a only. So slight 'off' in pilot calibration shouldn't be critical unless it's off to be just below the cutting point and forces car to go step lower.

I also see no difference in recharging time no matter if I drove if 25mph in town or just came straight in from 70mph highway ride with empty battery. In either case it draws ~7.4kW (30A @ 246V).

BMW in Hong Kong finally acknowledged the KLE issue. Parts are ordered and the KLE will be replaced once they arrive.

RJSATLBA said:

jackt said:

Recall / Replacement ID is "B61 31 14" I believe its being applied in a staggered fashion to VINs, so not all will show it immediately. Those cars manufactured after September should already have new KLE and appropriate software.

UK KLE's are being replaced when cars go into dealers and their VIN blocks have been assigned the recall ID, as the issue that prompted the design change doesn't appear to be so much of a problem in the UK, it isn't being pro-actively replaced, unless you have already had a charge fault resulting in a previous replacement of a KLE.

Click to expand...

I agree that the design fault may not be causing so many problems in the UK but it is an inconvenience whenever any of us needs to get a charge quickly or unexpectedly with a 7kWh charge that can't deliver full rate. Contrary to what has often been said I've seen no evidence that the charge rate restriction is temperature limited and have never seen more than about 5.7kWh at home regardless of weather.

Click to expand...

agree.. weather (temp) seems to make no differencee..

I had read that the new KLE was available so took my (April 2014) BEV into the dealer and they "read" the key and came back to say that the car was indeed due a quality enhancement (the PC term for recall :lol: ) i.e. new KLE. It was fitted this week and now the car charges at 7Kw where before it was limited to 5Kw following the software changes that were released last August.

As noted in this post, the reduction in charge rate was a pain if you need a quick turnaround - I have a BMW charging unit at home and if the car came in needing a charge before its afternoon trip it was touch and go whether it would have sufficient range.

After the KLE change I immediately noticed that the estimated range shown had increased significantly although obviously this has no effect on the actual range I achieve. It just seems that whatever calculation it does is less pessimistic than before. In January, when very cold, the estimated range on first startup would be less than 60 whereas now, in a cool March, it's over 80 (both on comfort).

Anyway I'm glad it will now charge at 7Kw again - it makes the AC public chargers just about viable for use on a longer trip if the DC chargers are out of action, as they frequently are!

KLE replacement does a reset of the GOM history and it seems to start high. It will probably drop over the next week or so - don't be disappointed if it does!

It's possible that the s/w update done to protect the KLE was different in Europe verses the USA, but given the typical temperatures we had after mine was first updated (prior to the new KLE), I did NOT see any degradation in charging rate. Now, that may very well also be because I rarely drive the thing very far or very hard, and the internals weren't hot enough to affect it. Based on the volt/amp meter I installed feeding my EVSE, I regularly saw 7Kw, the same as I see now with the new one (~30A * 246v = 7380W).

They did revise the range calculation, at least from what I saw, but it does rely on the last 18-miles you drove, and after the s/w update, that history was cleared, and default values were used until it had new actual history. My worst case when it was near 0-degrees F ( ~-17C), an indicated range of 40-50 miles. Since I don't drive it very far, I did not have a reason to test it.

Vne said:

BMW in Hong Kong finally acknowledged the KLE issue. Parts are ordered and the KLE will be replaced once they arrive.

Click to expand...

Hi Vne,

am this HK i3er and I had sent my i3 to BMWHK for KLE issue check-up in end Feb for 10 days, I just got back my car with zero modification, what they did in the 10days was only capturing the required data to HQ (as they said), no courtesy car was given in between.

BMWHK said that HK i3 is European version and currently they don't encounter any KLE issue in EU region, and they have reported my issue to HQ and I will be contacted if there is any parts / firmware change/MOD.

WTF

btw, we have a whatsapp group of i3er and we have around 50 active users now, please pm me your number if you are interested to join.

Tommy

Tommy, just send you a PM for the WhatsApp group.

Ask for Leslie (Service Advisor) in To Kwa Wan. He knows about the KLE replacement. They just got the go ahead for from the head office for it last week.

[hong kong region]

Got my KLE replaced for a few days. Current S/W version is I001-15-03-502. I got 7.395KW with the public L2 chargepoint, it's such a stunning number